


I 






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A DOG OF FLANDERS 

_ 

A CHRISTMAS STORY 


L. DE LA RAME* 


EDITED FOR USE IN SCHOOLS 


SARA D. JENKINS* 


ILLUSTRATED. 


EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
BOSTON 

New York Chicago San Francisco 


V 


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29629 


Copyrighted 

By EDUCATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY, 

1898. 


two oopifca kIMIVIB* 



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NELLO AND PKTR ASCHE 



A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


Nello and Petrasche were left all alone in the 
world. 

They were friends in a friendship closer than 
brotherhood. Nello was a little boy of Ardenne; 
Petrasche was a big Flemish dog. They were of the 
same age in years, yet one was still yonng, and the 
other was already old. They had dwelt together 
almost all their days; both were orphaned and poor, 
and owed their lives to the same hand. It had been 
the beginning of the tie between them, their first 
bond of sympathy; and it had strengthened day by 
day, and had grown with their growth, until they 
loved each other very greatly. 


5 


6 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


Their home was a little hut on the edge of a 
little village, — a Flemish village near Antwerp, set 
amidst flat pasture and corn-lands, with long lines of 
poplars and alders bending in the breeze on the 
edge of the great canal which ran through it. It 
had about a score of houses with shutters of bright 
green or sky-blue, and roofs rose-red or black and 
white, and walls whitewashed until they shone in the 
sun like snow. In the centre of the village stood 
a windmill, placed on a little moss-grown slope: it 
was a landmark to all the level country round. 

Here, almost from their birth upward, Nello 
and Petrasche, had dwelt together, in the little hut 
on the edge of the village, with the cathedral spire 
of Antwerp rising in the north-east beyond the 
great green plain of grass and corn that stretched 
away from them like a tideless, changeless sea. It 
was the hut of a very old man, of a very poor man — 
old Jehan Daas, who in his time had been a soldier, 
and who had brought from his service nothing 
except a wound, which had made him a cripple. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


7 


When old Jehan Daas had reached his full 
eighty years, his daughter died and left him as a 
legacy her two-year old son. The old man could ill 
support himself, but he took up the burden, and it 
soon became welcome and precious to him. Little 
Nello throve wdth him, and the old man and the 
little child lived in the poor hut contentedly. 

It was a very humble mud-hut, but clean and 
white as a sea-shell, and stood in a small plot of 
garden ground. They were very poor, terribly 
poor — many a day. they had nothing at all to eat. 
They never by any chance had enough; to have had 
enough to eat would have been to have reached 
paradise at once. But the old man was very gentle 
and good to the boy, and the boy was a beautiful, 
innocent, truthful, tender-natured creature; and they 
were happy on a crust and a few leaves of cabbage, 
and asked no more of earth or heaven, save indeed 
that Petrasche should be always with them, since 
without Petrasche, where would they have been? 

For Petrasche was their store of gold and wand 


8 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


of wealth, their bread- winner, their only friend and 
comforter. Petrasche dead or gone from them, they 
must have laid themselves down and died. Pet- 
rasche was body, brains, hands, head, and feet to 
both of them: Petrasche was their very life, their 
very soul. For Jehan Daas was old and a cripple, 
Nello was but a child; Petrasche was their dog. 

A dog of Flanders — yellow of hide, large of 
head and limb, with wolf-like ears that stood erect, 
and legs bowed and feet widened by hard service. 
Petrasche came of a race which had toiled hard from 
sire to sonin Flanders many a century, — slaves of 
slaves, dogs of the people, beasts of the shafts and 
harness, creatures that lived straining in the cart, 
and died breaking their hearts on the Mints of the 
streets. 

Petrasche had labored hard all his days over 
the sharp-set stones of the long, shadowless, weary 
roads. He had been born to pain and toil. He had 
been fed on curses and baptized with blows. Why 
not? It was a Christian country, but Petrasche was 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


9 


only a dog. Before he was fully grown he had 
known the bitter gall of the cart and the collar. 
Before he had entered his thirteenth month he had 
become the property of a hardware dealer, who 
wandered over the land north and south, from the 
blue sea to the green mountains. The dog had 
been sold for a small price because he was so young. 

His owner was a drunkard and a brute. The 
life of Petrasche was a life of torture. His 
master was a sullen, ill-living brutal man, who 
heaped his cart with pots, and pans, and flagons, 
and buckets, and other wares of crockery, and brass, 
and tin, and left Petrasche to draw the load as best 
he might, whilst he himself lounged idly by the side 
in fat and sluggish ease, smoking his black pipe, 
and stopping at every wine-shop on the road. 

Happily for Petrasche, — or unhappily, — he was 
very strong; he came of an iron race, so that he 
did not die, but managed to drag on a wretched 
existence under the brutal burdens, the lashes, the 
hunger, the thirst, the blows, which are the only 


10 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


wages which the Flemish pay the most patient of all 
their four-footed victims. One day, after two years 
of this long agony, Petrasche was going on one of 
the straight, dusty, unlovely roads that lead to the 
city of Rubens. It was full midsummer, and very 
warm. His cart was very heavy, piled high with 
goods. His owner walked on without noticing him, 
other than by the crack of the whip. Going along 
thus, in the full sun, on a scorching highway, having 
eaten nothing for twenty-four hours, and, „ which 
was far worse to him, not having tasted water for 
nearly twelve, being blind with dust, sore with 
blows, Petrasche, for once, staggered, foamed a 
little at the mouth, and fell. 

He fell in the middle of the white, dusty road, 
in the full glare of the sun; he was sick unto death, 
and motionless. His master gave him kicks, and 
oaths, and blows with a cudgel of oak, which had 
been often the only food and drink, the only reward 
offered to him. But Petrasche was beyond the 
reach of pain, or of curses; down in the white 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


11 


powder of the summer dust, he lay as if dead. 
After a while, his owner struck off the leathern 
bands of the harness, kicked the body into the 
grass, in savage wrath pushed the cart up hill, 
and left the dying dog for the ants to sting and 
for the crows to pick. 

Petrasche lay there, flung in the grass-green 
ditch. It was a busy road that day, and hundreds 
of people, on foot and on mules, in wagons or in 
carts, went by, tramping quickly and joyously on to 
the fair at Louvain. Some saw him; most did not 
even look; all passed on. A dead dog more or less 
is nothing anywhere in the world. 

After a time, amongst the holiday-makers, there 
came a little old man who was bent and lame and 
very feeble. He was very poorly and miserably 
clad, and he dragged his silent way slowly through 
the dust among the pleasure-seekers. He looked at 
Petrasche, paused, wondered, turned aside, then 
kneeled down in the rank grass and weeds of the 
ditch, and looked at the dog with kindly eyes of 




A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


,13 


pity. There was with him a little rosy, fair-haired, 
dark-eyed child of a few years of age, who pattered 
in amidst the bushes that were for him breast-high, 
and stood gazing upon the poor, great, quiet beast. 

Thus it was that these two first met, — the little 
Nello and the big Petrasche. 

That day, old Jehan Daas, with much effort 
drew the sufferer home to his own little hut, which 
was a stone’s throw off, and there tended him with 
so much care that the sickness, which had been 
brought on by heat and thirst and abuse, with time 
and shade and rest passed away, and health and 
strength returned, and Petrasche staggered up 
again upon his four, stout, tawny legs. 

Now for many weeks he had been useless, near 
to death; but all this time he had heard no rough 
word, had felt no harsh touch, but only the pitying 
murmurs of the little child’s voice, and the soothing 
caress of the old man’s hand. 

In his sickness, they too had grown to care for 
him, this lonely old man and the little happy child. 


14 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


He had a corner of the hut, with a heap of dry grass 
for his bed ; and they had learned to listen eagerly 
for his breathing in the dark night, to tell them that 
he lived; and when he first was well enough to give 
a loud, hollow, broken bay, they laughed aloud, and 
almost wept together for joy; and little Nello, in 
delighted glee, hung round his rugged neck chains 
of daisies, and kissed him with fresh and ruddy lips. 

So, then, when Petrasche arose, strong, big, 
gaunt, powerful, his great wistful eyes had a gentle 
wonder in them that there were no curses and no 
blows; and his heart awakened to a love, which 
never wavered while life lasted. Put Petrasche, 
being a dog, was grateful, and lay pondering 
long with grave, tender, brown eyes watching his 
friends. 

The old soldier, Jehan Daas, could do nothing 
for his living but limp about a little with a small 
cart, with which he carried daily into the town of 
Antwerp the milk-cans of those happier neighbors 
who owned cattle. The villagers gave him the 


A BOG OF FLANDERS. 


15 


employment a little out of charity, — more because it 
suited them well to send their milk into the town by 
so honest a carrier, and to stay at home themselves 
to look after their gardens, their cows, their poultry, 
or their little fields. But it was becoming hard 
work for the old man. He was eighty-three, and 
Antwerp was a long way off. 

One day when he had got well and was lying 
in the sun with the wreath of daisies round his 
tawny neck, Petrasche watched the milk-cans 
come and go. 

The next morning before the old man had 
touched the cart, Petrasche rose and walked to it, 
placed himself between its handles, and said, as 
plainly as dumb show could, that his desire was to 
work in return for the bread he had eaten. 

Jehan Daas resisted long, for the old man was one 
of those who thought it a shame to bind dogs to labor 
for which nature never formed them. But Petrasche 
would not be denied. Finding they did not harness 
him, he tried to draw the cart onward with his teeth. 


16 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


At length Jehan Daas gave way, and made his 
cart so that Petrasche could run in it, every morning 
of his life. 

When the winter came, Jehan Daas thanked the 
blessed fortune that had brought him to the dying 
dog in the ditch, that fair day; for he was very old, 
and he grew feebler with each year, and he would ill 
have known how to pull his load of milk-cans over 
the snows and through the deep ruts in the mud, if it 
had not been for the strength of the animal he had 
befriended. As for Petrasche, it seemed heaven to 
him. After the frightful burdens that his first master 
had made him to strain under, at the call of the whip 
at every step, it seemed nothing to him but play to 
step out with this little light green cart, and its 
bright brass cans, by the side of the gentle old man 
who always paid him with a tender caress and kind 
word. Besides, his work was over by three or four 
o’clock in the day, when he was free to do as he 
would, — to stretch himself, to sleep in the sun, to 
wander in the fields, to romp with the young child, 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


17 


or to play with his fellow dogs. Petrasche was 
very happy. 

A few years later old Jehan Daas, who had 
always been a cripple, became so feeble that it was 
impossible for him to go with the cart. Then 
little USTello, being in his sixth year, and knowing the 
town well, took his place beside the cart, and sold 
the milk and received the xcoins, and brought them 
back to their owners with a pretty grace which 
charmed all who beheld him. 

He was a beautiful child, with dark, grave, 
tender eyes, and a lovely bloom upon his face, and 
fair locks that clustered about his face; and many an 
artist sketched the group as it went by, — the green 
cart with the brass flagons, and the great tawny- 
colored dog, with his belled harness that chimed 
cheerily as he went, and the small figure that ran 
beside him, which had little white feet in great 
wooden shoes, and a soft, grave, innocent, happy 
face, like the little fair children in Rubens’ pictures. 

Nello and Petrasche did the work so well and 


18 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


so joyfully, that Jehan Daas himself, when the 
summer came and he was better again, had no need 
to stir out, but could sit in the doorway in the sun 
and see them go forth through the garden wicket, 
and doze and dream and pray a little, and then 
awake again as the clock tolled three, and watch for 
their return. And on their return Petrasche would 
shake himself free of his harness with a bark of glee, 
and Nello would tell with pride the doings of the 
day ; and they would all go in together to their meal 
of rye-bread and milk or soup, and see the shadows 
lengthen over the great plain, and the twilight veil 
the fair cathedral spire; and then lie down together 
to sleep peacefully after the old man had said a 
prayer. 

So the days and the years went on, and the 
lives of Nello and Petrasche were happy, innocent, 
and healthful. In the spring and summer especially 
were they glad. Flanders is not a lovely land, and 
around the city of Pubens it is least lovely of all. 
Corn fields, pasture and ploughed fields, succeed 




r 


NELLO AND PKTRASC'HE GOING TO MARKET. 



A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


19 


each other on the plain, and save by some gray 
tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure 
crossing the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner’s 
bundle or a woodman’s fagot, there is no change, 
no beauty, anywhere. 

But the child and dog were happy, when work 
was done, to lie buried in the tall grass on the 
side of the canal, and to watch the vessels drifting 
by and bringing the crisp salt smell of the sea, 
among the blossoming scents of the country 
summer. 

Iu the winter it was harder; they had to rise in 
the darkness and the bitter cold, and seldom had as 
much as they could eat. The hut was scarce better 
than a shed when the nights were cold, although it 
looked so pretty in warm weather, buried in a great 
kindly vine, that never bore fruit, but which covered 
the hut with luxuriant green tracery, all through the 
months of blossom and harvest. In winter, the 
winds found many holes in the walls, the vine was 
black and leafless, the bare lands looked very bleak 


20 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


and drear without, and sometimes within the floor 
was flooded or frozen. In winter, the snow numbed 
the little white limbs of Nello, and the icicles cut the 
brave, untiring feet of Petrasche. 

But even then they were never heard to lament. 
The child’s wooden shoes and the dog’s four legs 
trotted manfully together over the frozen fields 
to the chime of the bells on the harness; and then 
sometimes, in the streets of Antwerp, some house- 
wife brought them a bowl of soup and a handful 
of bread, some kindly trader threw billets of 
fuel into the little cart as it went homeward, or some 
woman in their own village bade them keep 
some share of the milk they carried. Then they ran 
over the white lands, through the early darkness, 
bright and happy, and burst with a shout of joy into 
their home. 

So, on the whole, it was well with them; and 
Petrasche, meeting on the highway or in the public 
streets the many dogs who toiled from daybreak to 
night-fall, paid only with blows and curses, and 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


21 


loosened from the shafts with a kick, to starve and 
freeze as best they might, — Petrasche in his heart 
was very grateful to his fate, and thought it the 
fairest and the kindliest the world could hold. 
Though he was often very hungry indeed when he 
lay down at night, though he had to work in the 
heat of summer and chill of winter, though his feet 
were often tender with wounds from the sharp edges 
of the jagged pavement, though he had to perform 
tasks beyond his strength and against his nature, — 
yet he was grateful and content; he did his duty 
each day, and the eyes that he loved smiled on 
him. 

There was only one thing in his life, which 
caused Petrasche any uneasiness. Antwerp, as 
all the world knows, is full at every turn of old 
churches, dark, and ancient, and majestic, standing 
in crooked courts, jammed against gateways and 
taverns, rising by the water’s edge, with bells 
ringing above them in the air, and ever and 
again out of their arched doors a swell of music 



V 


STATUE OE RUBENS, ANTWERP 








A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


23 


pealing. There they remain, shut in amidst the 
hurry, the crowds and the unloveliness of the 
busy world. All day the clouds drift, and the 
birds circle, and the winds sigh around them, and 
beneath the earth at their feet there sleeps, — 
Rubens. For the city which is the tomb of 
Rubens still lives to us through him, and through 
him alone. 

It is so quiet there, so quiet, except when 
the organ peals, and the choir sings. Sure no artist 
ever had a greater gravestone than pure marble 
gives to him in the heart of his birthplace, in the 
chancel of the church. 

Without Rubens, what were Antwerp? A dirty, 
bustling market-town, which no man would ever 
care to look upon, save the traders who do business 
on its wharves. With Rubens, to the whole world 
of men it is a sacred name, a sacred soil. Flanders 
has been wise. In his life she glorified this greatest 
of her sons, and in his death she magnifies his 


name. 


24 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


Now the trouble of Petrasche was this. Into 
these great, sad piles of stones, the child Nello 
many and many a time would enter, and disappear 
through their dark doors, while Petrasche was left 
without upon the pavement. Once or twice, he did 
try to see for himself, clattering up the steps with 
his milk-cart behind him; but he had been sent back 
again by a tall man in black clothes and silver 
chains of office; and fearful of bringing his little 
master into trouble, he remained before the churches 
until the boy came out. 

It was not the fact of his going into them 
which pained Petrasche. He knew that people 
went to church, all the village went to the small, 
tumble-down gray pile opposite the red wind-mill. 
What troubled him was that little Nello always 
looked strange when he came out, always very 
flushed or very pale; and whenever he returned 
home after such a visit, would sit silent and dream- 
ing, not caring to play, but gazing out at the evening 
skies very sad. What was it? wondered Petrasche. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


25 


He thought it could not be good for the little 
lad to be so grave, and in his dumb way he tried all 
he could to keep Nello by him in the sunny fields, 
or in the busy market-place. But to the churches 
Aello would go, most often of all would he go to 
the great church; Petrasche left without on the 
stones stretched himself, and yawned, and sighed, 
and even howled now and then, until the doors 
closed, and the child came forth again, and winding 
his arms about the dog’s neck would kiss him on 
his broad, tawny-colored forehead, and murmur 
always the same words, ” If I could only see them, 
Petrasche! — if I could only see them! r 

What were they? wondered Petrasche, looking 
up with large, gentle eyes. One day, the doors 
were left ajar, and he got in after his little friend 
and saw. " They ” were two great covered pictures 
on either side of the choir. 

Nello was kneeling before the picture of the 
Assumption, and when he noticed Petrasche, he 
rose and drew the dog gently out into the air. His 


26 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


face was wet with tears. He looked up at the veiled 
places as he passed them, and said to his companion, 
" It is so terrible not to see them, Petrasche, just 
because one is poor and cannot pay! Rubens never 
meant that the poor should not see them, I am sure. 
He would have had us see them any day, every day. 
Now they keep them covered there, — covered in the 
dark, the beautiful things! — and they never feel the 
light, and no eyes look on them, unless rich people 
come and pay. If I could only see them, I would 
be content to die.” 

But he could not see them, and Petrasche could 
not help him, for to gain the silver piece that the 
church asks as the price for looking on the glories 
of the Elevation of the Cross, and the Descent from 
the Cross, was beyond the powers of either of them. 
They had never so much as a penny to spare. If they 
cleared enough to get a little wood for the stove, a little 
broth for the pot, it was all they could do. And yet 
the heart of the child was set in sore and endless long- 
ing upon seeing the two veiled pictures by Rubens. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


27 


The whole soul of the little boy thrilled and 
stirred with love for Art. Going* on his way 
through the old city in the early day, before the sun 
or the people had risen, Nello, who looked only a 
little peasant-boy with a great dog drawing milk to 
sell from door to door, was in a dream of delight. 
Nello, cold and hungry, with stockingless feet, in 
wooden shoes, and the winter winds blowing his 
curls and lifting his poor, thin garments, saw only 
the beautiful, fair face of the Mary of the Assump- 
tion, with the waves of golden hair lying upon her 
shoulders, and the light of love shining down upon 
her brow. Nello, reared in poverty, untaught 
in letters, unheeded by men, had what is called 
Genius. 

No one knew it, he as little as any. No one 
knew it. Only indeed Petrasche, who, being with 
him always, saw him draw with chalk upon the 
stones any and every thing that grew or breathed; 
heard him on his little bed of hay murmur all man- 
ner of timid prayers to the great Master; watched 





JKH AN DA AS 



A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


29 


his gaze darken and his face glow at the evening 
sunset, or the rosy rising of the dawn; and felt 
many and many a time the tears of a strange, name- 
less pain and joy, mingled together, fall hot from 
the bright young eyes upon his own wrinkled, 
yellow forehead. 

f 'I should go to my grave quite content if I 
thought, Nello, that when thou growest a man thou 
couldst own this hut and the little plot of ground, 
and labor for thyself, and be called Master by thy 
neighbors,” said the old man Jehan many an hour 
from his bed. For to own a bit of soil, and to be 
called Master by the hamlet round, is to have 
reached the highest ideal of a Flemish peasant; and 
the old soldier, who had wandered over all the earth 
in his youth, and had brought nothing back, thought 
in his old age that to live and die on one spot was 
the fairest fate he could desire for his darling. But 
Nello said nothing. 

Nello dreamed of other things in the future 
than of tilling the little bit of earth, and being called 


30 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


Master by neighbors a little poorer or a little less 
poor than himself. The church spire, where it rose 
beyond the fields in the ruddy evening skies, or in 
the dim, gray, misty mornings, said other things to 
him than this. But these he told only to Petrasche, 
whispering his fancies when they went together 
through the fogs of the daybreak, or lay resting 
among the rustling rushes by the water’s side. 

For such dreams are not easily shaped into 
speech, and they would only have vexed and 
troubled the poor old bedridden man. 

There was only one other beside Petrasche to 
whom Nello could talk of his dreams. This other 
was little Alice, who lived at the old red mill 
on the grassy mound, and whose father, the miller, 
was the best-to-do man in all the village. Little 
Alice was only a pretty girl with soft, round, rosy 
features, made lovely by sweet dark eyes. 

Little Alice was often with Nello and Pet- 
rasche. They played in the fields; they ran in the 
snow; they gathered daisies and berries; they went 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


31 


up to the old gray church together; and they often 
sat together by the broad wood-fire in the mill- 
house. Little Alice, indeed, was the richest child in 
the hamlet. She had neither brother nor sister; her 
blue dress had never a hole in it; at Kirmesse she 
had as many gilded nuts and sugar plums as her 
hands could hold; and when she went up for her 
first communion her flaxen curls were covered with 
a cap of richest lace, which had been her mother’s 
and her grandmother’s, before it came to her. Men 
spoke already, though she was but twelve years, of 
the good wife she would be for their sons to woo 
and win; but she herself was a little gay, simple 
child, and she loved no playfellows so well as Jehan 
Daas’ grandson and his dog. 

One day her father, a good man, but somewhat 
stein, came on a pretty group in the long meadow 
behind the mill, where the grass had that day been 
cut. It was his little daughter sitting amidst the 
hay, with the great tawny head of Petrasche on her 
lap, and many wreaths of poppies and blue flowers 


32 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


round them both. On a clean, smooth, slab of* pine 
wood, the boy Nello drew their likeness with a stick 
of charcoal. 

The miller stood and looked at the portrait with 
tears in his eyes, it was so strangely like, and he 
loved his only child, closely and well. Then he 
roughly chid the little girl for idling there whilst 
her mother needed her within, and sent her indoors, 
crying and afraid. Then, turning, he snatched the 
wood from Nello’s hands. "Dost do much of such 
folly? ” he asked, but there was a tremble in his voice. 

Kello colored and hung his head. " I draw 
everything I see,” he murmured. 

The miller was silent: then he stretched his 
hand out with a franc in it. " It is folly, as I say, 
and evil waste of time; yet, it is like Alice, and will 
please the mother. Take this silver bit for it, and 
leave it for me.” 

The color died out of the face of the young 
child. He lifted his head and put his hands behind 
his back. ” Keep your money and the portrait 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


33 


both,” he said simply. "You have been often good 
to me.” Then he called Petrasche to him, and 
walked away across the fields. 

" I could have sfeen them with that franc,” he 
murmured to Petrasche, " but I could not sell her 
picture, — not even for them.” 

Master Cogez went into his mill-house troubled 
in his mind. " That lad must not be so much with 
Alice,” he said to his wife that night. " Trouble 
may come of it hereafter. He is fifteen now, and 
she is twelve; and the boy is comely of face and 
form.” 

"And he is a good lad, and a loyal,” said the 
housewife, feasting her eyes on the piece of pine 
wood where it was throned above the chimney with 
a cuckoo clock in oak. 

"Yes, I do not deny that,” said the miller. 

" Then, if what you think of were ever to come 
to pass,” said the wife, hesitatingly, "would it 
matter so much? She will have enough for both, 
and one cannot be better than happy.” 


34 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


" You are a woman, and therefore a fool,” said 
the miller harshly, striking his pipe on the table. 
" The lad is naught but a beggar, and, with these 
painter’s fancies, worse than a beggar. Have a care 
that they are not together in the future, or I will 
send the child to surer keeping.” 

The poor mother was terrified, and promised to 
do his will. Not that she could bring herself to 
separate the child from her playmate. But there 
were many ways in which little Alice was kept 
away from her companion; and Nello, being a boy 
proud and quiet, ceased to turn his own steps and 
those of Petrasche, as he had been used to do, to 
the old red mill upon the slope. What his offence 
was he did not know. He supposed he had hi 
some manner angered Master Cogez by taking the 
portrait of Alice in the meadow; and when the 
child, who loved him, ran to him and nestled her 
hand in his, he smiled at her very sadly, and 
said, "Nay, Alice, do not anger your father. 
He thinks that I make you idle, dear, and he is not 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


35 


pleased that you should be with me. He is a good 
man, and loves you well; we will not anger him, 
Alice.” 

But it was with a sad heart that he said it, and 
the earth did not look so bright to him as it used to 
do, when he went out at sunrise under the poplars 
down the straight roads with Petrasche. The old 
red mill had been a landmark to him, and he used to 
pause by it, going and coming, for a cheery greet- 
ing, as the little flaxen head rose above the low mill- 
wicket, and the little rosy hands had held out a 
bone or a crust to Petrasche. Now the dog looked 
wistfully at a closed door, and the boy went on with 
a pang at his heart, and the child sat within, with 
tears dropping slowly on the knitting to which she 
was set, on her little stool by the stove. Cogez, 
working among his sacks and his mill-gear, would 
harden his will and say to himself, " It is best so. 
The lad is all but a beggar, and full of idle, dream- 
ing fooleries. Who knows what might not come of 
it in the future? So he would not have the door 













OLD MILL, ANTWEKi* 



A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


37 


unbarred, except now and then. Now there seemed 
to be neither warmth nor mirth to the two children, 
who had been used so long to daily gleeful, happy 
speech and pastime, with no other watcher of their 
sports than Petrasche, sagely shaking the brazen 
bells of his collar, and answering to their change 
of mood. 

All this while, the little panel of pine wood sat 
over the chimney in the mill-kitchen, with the 
cuckoo clock; and sometimes it seemed to Nello a 
little hard that whilst his gift was there he himself 
should not be. 

But he did not complain. Old Jehan Daas had 
said ever to him, " We are poor, we must take what 
God sends, — the ill with the good; the poor cannot 
choose.” 

To which the boy had always listened in silence. 
But a certain vague, sweet hope, such as comes to 
the children of genius, had whispered in his heart, 
w Yet the poor do choose sometimes, — choose to be 
great, so that men cannot say them nay.” And he 


38 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


thought so still. One day, the little Alice, finding 
him by chance alone amongst the corn-fields by the 
canal, ran to him and held him close, and sobbed 
because the morrow would be her Saint’s day, and 
for the first time in all her life her parents had 
failed to bid him to the little supper and romp in the 
great barns. Nello kissed her and murmured to 
her in true faith, "It shall be different one day, 
Alice. One day that little bit of pine wood that 
your father has of mine shall be worth its weight 
in silver, and he will not shut the door against 
me then. Only love me always, dear little Alice, 
only love me always, and I will be great.” 

"And if I do not love you?” the pretty child 
asked, through her tears. 

Nello’s eyes left her face and wandered to the 
distance, where in the red and gold of the Flemish 
night the cathedral spire rose. There was a smile 
on his 'face so sweet, and yet so sad, that little Alice 
was awed by it. "I will be great still,” he said 
under his breath — "great still, or die, Alice.” 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


39 


"You do not love me,” said the little child, 
pushing him away; but the boy shook his head and 
smiled, and went on his way through the tall yellow 
corn. He saw as in a vision a day in a fair future 
when he should come and ask Alice of her people, 
and be not refused or denied, but received in honor. 
The village folk should throng to look upon him 
and say in one another’s ears, ”Dost see him? 
He is a king among men, for he is a great artist, 
and the world speaks his name; and yet he was only 
our poor little Yello, who was a beggar, as one may 
say, and only got his bread by the help of his dog.” 
And he thought how he would fold his grandsire in 
furs and purple, and paint him; and of how he 
would hang the throat of Petrasche with a collar of 
gold, and place him on his right hand, and say to 
the people, " This was once my only friend; ” and of 
how he would build himself a great white marble 
palace, and make to himself gardens of pleasure on 
the slope looking outward to where the cathedral 
spire rose, and not dwell in it himself, but summon 


40 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


to it, as to a home, all men young, and poor, and 
friendless, wishing to do mighty things; and of 
how he would say to them always, if they sought 
to bless his name, "Nay, do not thank me, — thank 
Rubens. Without him, what should I have been?” 
And these dreams, beautiful, innocent, free of all 
selfishness, full of hero worship, were so closely 
about him as he went, that he was happy, — happy 
even on this sad day, when he and Petrasche went 
home by themselves to the little dark hut and the 
meal of black bread, while in the mill-house all the 
children of the village sang and laughed, and ate 
the big round cakes and gingerbread, and danced in 
the great barn by the light of the stars, and the 
music of flute and fiddle. 

w Never mind, Petrasche,” he said, with his 
arms round the dog’s neck, as they both sat in the 
door of the hut, where the sounds of the mirth 
at the mill came down to them on the night 
air — " never mind. It shall all be changed by 
and by.” 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


41 


He believed in the future. Petrasche thought 
that the loss of the mill supper in the present Avas 
greater than dreams of milk and honey in some 
hereafter. And Petrasche growled whenever he 
passed by Master Cogez. 

"This is Alice’s name-day, is it not?” said the 
old man Daas that night from the corner, where he 
was stretched upon his bed of sacking. 

The boy said " yes.” 

"And why not there?” said his grandfather. 
"Thou hast never missed a year before, Nello.” 

" Thou art too sick to leave,” said the lad, 
bending his handsome young head over the bed. 

"Tut! tut! Mother Nulette would have come 
and sat with me, as she does scores of times. What 
is the cause, Nello? Thou surely hast not had ill 
words with the little one?” 

" Nay, grandfather, — never,” said the boy 
quickly, with a hot color in his bent face. "Simply 
and truly, her father did not ask me this year, 
lie has taken some whim against me.” 


42 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


" But thou hast done nothing wrong?” 

"That I know, — nothing. I took the portrait 
of Alice on a piece of pine, that is all.” 

"Ah!” The old man was silent; the truth 
came to him with the boy’s answer. He was tied to 
a bed of dried leaves in the corner of the hut, but 
he had not forgotten what the ways of the world 
were like. 

He drew JSTello’s fair head fondly to his breast. 
"Thou art very poor, my child,” he said with a 
quiver in his voice, "so poor! It is very hard for 
thee.” 

"Nay, I am rich,” said Nello; and he thought 
so. He went and stood by the door of the hut 
in the quiet autumn night, and watched the stars, 
and the tall poplars bend and shiver in the wind. 
All the windows of the mill-house were lighted, and 
every now and then the notes of the flute came to 
him. The tears fell down his cheeks, for he was 
but a child; yet he smiled, and he said to himself, 
"In the future!” He stayed there until all was 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


43 


quite still and dark, then he and Petrasche went and 
slept together, side by side. 

The boy had a secret which only Petrasche 
knew. There was a little out-house to the hut, which 
no one entered but himself, — a dreary place, but 
with clear light from the north. Here he had made 
rudely an easel in rough lumber, and here, on a 
great gray sea of stretched paper, lie had given 
shape to one of the fancies of his brain. No one 
had ever taught him anything; colors he had no 
means to buy; he had gone without bread many a 
time to get even the few rude things that he had 
here; and it was only in black or white that he 
could draw the things he saw. This great figure 
which he had drawn in chalk was only an old man 
sitting on a fallen tree, — only that. He had seen 
old Michael the woodman sitting so at evening, 
many a time. No one had told him of drawing 
of outline, of form or of shadow, and yet he 
had given all the weary, worn-out age, all the sad, 
quiet patience, all the rugged, careworn pathos of his 


44 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


model, and given them so that the old, lonely figure 
was a poem, sitting there, sad and alone, on the 
dead tree, with the darkness of* night behind him. 

It was rude, of* course, and no doubt had many 
faults, yet it was real, true to Nature, true in 
Art, very mournful, and in a manner beautiful. 

Fetrasche had lain quiet countless hours, watch- 
ing its gradual creation, after the labor of each 
day was done; and he knew that Nello had a hope, 
— vain and wild, perhaps, — of sending this great 
drawing for a prize of two hundred francs a year, 
which it was told in Antwerp would be open to 
every lad of talent, scholar or peasant, under 
eighteen, who would attempt to win it, with some 
unaided work of chalk or pencil. Three of the 
foremost artists in Antwerp were to be the judges, 
and to elect the victor on his merits. 

All the spring and summer and autumn, Nello 
had been at work upon this treasure, which, if 
triumphant, would build him his first step toward 
the art which he loved. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


45 


He said nothing to any one; his grandfather 
would not have understood, and little Alice was lost 
to him. Only to Petrasche he told all, and 
whispered, w Rubens would give it to me, I think, if 
he knew.” 

Petrasche thought so too, for he knew that 
Rubens had loved dogs, or he never would have 
painted them with such care; and men who loved 
dogs were, as Petrasche knew, always pitiful. 

The drawings were to go in on the first day of 
December, so that he who should win might rejoice 
with all his people at the Christmas season. 

In the twilight of a bitter wintry day, and with 
a beating heart, now quick with hope, now faint 
with fear, Nello placed the great picture on his little 
green milk-cart, and took it with the h$Jp of Pet- 
rasche, into the town, and there left it. 

Perhaps it is worth nothing at all. How can 

\ 

I tell?” he thought, with the heartsickness of a 
great fear. Now that he had left it there, it seemed 
to him so vain, so foolish, to dream that he, a little 


# 





A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


47 


lad with bare feet, who barely knew his letters, 
could do anything at which great painters, real 
artists, could ever deign to look. Yet he took heart 
as he went by the cathedral: the lordly form of 
Rubens seemed to rise from the fog and the dark- 
ness, to loom in its magnificence before him, while 
the lips with their kindly smile, seemed to him to 
say, "Nay, have courage! It was not by a weak 
heart and by faint fears that I wrote my name for 
all time upon Antwerp.” 

Nello ran home through the cold night, com- 
forted. He had done his best; the rest must be as 
God willed, he thought, in that innocent faith which 
had been taught him in the little gray chapel, 
amongst the willows and the poplar-trees. 

The winter was very sharp already. That 
night, after they reached the hut, snow fell; and fell 
for very many days after that, and all the smaller 
streams were frozen over, and the cold was intense 
upon the plains. Then, indeed, while the world 
was all dark it became hard work to go round for 


48 


A DOG OF FLANDP^RS. 


the milk, and carry it through the snow to the silent 
town. It was hard work for Petrasche, for the 
years that were bringing Nello a stronger youth, 
were bringing the dog old age, and his joints were 
stiff, and his bones often ached. But he would never 
give up his share of the labor. Nello would have 
spared him, and drawn the cart himself, but Pet- 
rasche would not allow it. All he would permit or 
accept was the help of a push from behind the truck, 
as it lumbered along through the ice-ruts. Pet- 
rasche had lived in harness, and he was proud of it. 
He suffered a great deal sometimes from frost, and 
the terrible roads, and pain in his limbs, but he only 
drew his breath hard and bent his stout neck, and 
trod onward. 

Rest thee at home, Petrasche, — it is time 
thou didst rest, — and I can quite well push the 
cart by myself,” urged Xello many a morning; but 
Petrasche, who understood him, would not consent 
to stay at home. Every day he rose and placed 
himself in his shafts, and plodded along over the 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


49 


snow, through the fields that his four round feet had 
left their print upon so many, many years. 

" One must never rest till one dies,” thought 
Petrasche; and sometimes it seemed to him that that 
time of rest for him was not very far off. His sight 
was less clear than it had been, and it gave him 
pain to rise after the night’s sleep, though he would 
never lie a moment in his straw, when once the 
bell of the chapel, tolling five, let him know that the 
daybreak of labor had begun. 

” My poor Petrasche, we shall soon lie quiet 
together, you and I,” said old Jehan Daas, stretch- 
ing out to stroke the head of Petrasche with the old 
withered hand which had always shared with him its 
one poor crust of bread; and the hearts of the old 
man and the old dog ached together with one 
thought, — when they were gone, who would care 
for their darling? 

One afternoon, as they came back from Antwerp 
over the snow, which had become hard and smooth 
as marble, over all the Flemish plains, they found 


50 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


dropped in the road a pretty little toy, a tambourine 
player, all scarlet and gold, about six inches high, 
quite unspoiled and unhurt by its fall. It was a 
pretty toy. Nello tried to find its owner, and, failing, 
thought that it was just the thing to please Alice. 

It was quite night, when he passed the mill- 
house; he knew the little window of her room. It 
could be no harm, he thought, if he gave her his 
little piece of treasure-trove, — they had been play- 
fellows so long. There was a shed with a sloping 
roof beneath her window; he climbed it, and tapped 
softly at the lattice; there was a little light within. 
The child opened it and looked out, half frightened. 

Nello put the tambourine-player into her hands. 
" Here is a doll I found in the snow, Alice. Take 
it,” he whispered; " take it, and God bless thee, 
dear! ” 

He slid down from the shed-roof before she had 
time to thank him, and ran off through the darkness. 

That night there was a fire at the mill. Out- 
buildings and much corn were destroyed, although 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


51 


the mill itself and the dwelling-house were un- 
harmed. All the village was out in terror, and 
engines came tearing through the snow from 
Antwerp. The miller was insured, and would lose 
nothing; nevertheless he was in furious wrath, and 
declared aloud that the fire was due to no accident, 
but to some foul intent. 

Nello, awakened from his sleep, ran to help 
with the rest. Cogez thrust him angrily aside. 
rf Thou wert loitering here after dark,” he said 
roughly. "I believe, on my soul, that thou dost 
know more of the fire than any one ! ” 

Nello heard him in silence, not supposing that 
any one could say such things except in jest, and 
not knowing how any one could pass a jest at such 
a time. 

Nevertheless, the miller said the brutal thing 
openly to .many of his neighbors in the day that 
followed; and though no charge was ever made 
against the lad, it got about that Nello had been 
seen in the mill-yard after dark, and that he bore 


52 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


Cogez a grudge for forbidding him to play with 
little Alice. So the hamlet, which followed the 
sayings of its richest landowner, and whose families 
all hoped to secure the riches of Alice, in some future 
time for their sons, took the hint to give grave looks 
and cold words to old Jehan Daas’ grandson. Xo 
one said anything to him openly, but at the cottages 
and farms where Nello and Petrasche called every 
morning for the milk for Antwerp, dark glances and 
few words replaced the broad smiles and cheerful 
greetings, to which they had been always used. Xo 
one really believed the miller, but the people were 
all very poor, and very ignorant, and the one rich 
man of the place did not like him. ^ello in his 
innocence and his friendlessness, had no strength to 
stem the tide. 

"Thou art very cruel to the lad,” the miller's 
wife dared to say, weeping, to her lord. " Sure he 
is an innocent lad, and would never dream of any 
such wickedness, however sore his heart might be.” 

But Master Cogez, having once said a thing, 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


53 


held to it, though, in his soul, he knew well the 
wrong that he was doing. 

Meanwhile, I^cllo bore the injury with a proud 
patience; he only gave way a little when he was 
quite alone with Petrasche. Besides, he thought, 
"If it should win! They will be sorry then, 
perhaps.” 

Still, to a boy not quite sixteen, and who had 
dwelt in one-little world all his short life, and in his 
childhood had been caressed and praised on all 
sides, it was a hard trial to have the whole of that 
little world turn against him for naught. Especially 
hard in that bleak, snow-bound, winter-time, when 
the only light and warmth there could be found was 
beside the village hearths, and in the kindly greet- 
ings of neighbors. In the winter, all drew nearer 
to each other, all to all, except ISTello and Petrasche, 
with whom none now would have anything to do, 
and who were left to fare as they might, with the 
old, bedridden man in the little cabin, whose fire was 
often low, and whose board was often without 


54 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


bread; for there was a man from Antwerp who now 
drove his mule for the milk, and there were only 
three or four of the people who had remained faith- 
ful to the little green cart. So that the burden 
which Petrasche drew had become very light, and 
the money in Nello’s pouch had become, alas! very 
small. 

The dog would stop, as usual, at all the familiar 
gates which were now closed to him, and look up at 
them sadly; and it cost the neighbors a pang to 
shut their doors and their hearts, and let Petrasche 
draw his cart on again, empty. Nevertheless, they 
did it, for they wished to please Master Cogez. 

Christmas was close at hand. 

The weather was very wild and cold. The 
snow was six feet deep, and the ice was firm enough 
to bear oxen and men upon it, everywhere. At this 
season, the little village was gay and cheerful. At 
the poorest dwelling there were cakes, joking and 
dancing, sugared saints, and gilded toys. The 
merry Flemish bells jingled everywhere on the 


A DOG OF FEANDERS. 


55 


horses; everywhere within doors some well-filled 
soup-pot sang and smoked, over the stove; and 
everywhere over the snow, laughing maidens 
pattered in bright kerchiefs, and stout kirtles, 
going to and from the mass. Only in the little 
hut, it was very dark and very cold. 

Nello and Petrasche were left alone ; for one night 
in the week before the Christmas day, Death entered, 
and took away forever old Jehan Daas, who had 
never known of life aught save its poverty, and its 
pains. He had long been half dead, powerless 
for anything beyond a gentle word; and yet his loss 
fell on them both with a great horror. He had 
passed away from them in his sleep, and in the gray 
dawn they learned their loss. He had long been 
only a poor, feeble, old man, but he had loved them 
well, and his smile had always welcomed their return. 
They mourned for him, refusing to be comforted, as 
in the white winter day they followed the box, that 
held his body, to the nameless grave, by the little 
gray church. They were his only mourners, these 


56 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


two whom he had left friendless upon earth, — the 
young boy and the old dog. ” Surely he will relent 
now and let the poor lad come hither?” thought the 
miller’s wife, glancing at her husband where he 
smoked bv the hearth. 

Cogez knew her thought, but he hardened his 
heart, and would not unbar his door as the little 
humble funeral went by. ” The boy is a beggar,” 
he said to himself, ” he shall not be about Alice.” 

The woman dared not say anything aloud, but 
when the grave was closed, and the mourners had 
gone, she put a wreath of immortelles into Alice’s 
hands, and bade her go and lay it on the dark, 
unmarked mound in the snow. 

Nello and Petrasche went home with broken 
hearts, but even that poor, cheerless home they 
were denied. There was a month’s rent over-due 
for their little home, and when Nello had paid the 
last sad service to the dead, he had not a coin left. 
He went and begged grace of the owner of the hut, 
a cobbler who went every Sunday night to drink his 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


57 


pint of wine, and to smoke with Master Cogez. The 
cobbler would grant no mercy. He was a harsh 
man, and loved money. He claimed for his rent 
every stick and stone, every pot and pan, in the hut, 
and bade I^ello and Petrasche be out of it on the 
morrow. 

Now, the cabin was lowly enough, and in some 
sense miserable enough, and yet their hearts loved 
it with a great affection. They had been so 
happy there; and in the summer, with its vine and its 
flowering beans, it was so pretty and bright in the 
midst of the sun-lighted fields! Their life in it had 
been full of labor, yet they had been so well content, 
so gay of heart, running together when young to 
meet the old man’s never-failing smile of welcome! 

All night long the boy and the dog sat by the 
fireless hearth in the darkness, drawn close together 
for warmth and in sorrow. Their bodies did not feel 
the cold, but their hearts seemed frozen in them. 

When the morning broke over the white, chill 
earth, it was the morning of Christmas Eve. With 


58 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


a shudder, USTello clasped close to him his only friend, 
while his tears fell hot and fast on the dog’s fore- 
head. " Let us go, Petrasche, — dear, dear Pet- 
rasche,” he murmured. "We will not wait to be 
kicked out ; let us go.” 

Petrasche had no will but his master’s, and they 
went sadly, side by side, out from the little place 
which was so dear to them both, and in which every 
humble, homely thing was to them precious and 
beloved. Petrasche drooped his head wearily as he 
passed by his own green cart. It was no longer his, 
— it had to go with the rest to pay the rent, and his 
brass harness lay idle and glittering on the snow. 
The dog could have lain down beside it, and died for 
very heart sickness, as he went; but whilst the lad 
lived and needed him, Petrasche would not give way. 

They took the old road into Antwerp. The 
day had yet scarce more than dawned; most of the 
shutters were still closed, but some of the villagers 
were about. They took no notice as the dog and 
the boy passed. At one poor Nello paused and 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


59 


looked wistfully within: his grandfather had done 
many a kindly turn in neighbor’s service to the 
people who dwelt there. 

"AVouldyou give Petrasche a crust?” he said 
timidly. "He is old, and he has had nothing since 
yesterday morning.” 

The woman shut the door hastily, saying wheat 
and rye were very dear. The boy and the dog went 
on again wearily; they asked no more. 

By slow and painful ways they reached Antwerp 
as the chimes tolled ten. 

" If I had anything about me I could sell, to get 
him bread!” thought Nello; but he had nothing 
about him except the linen and serge that covered 
him, and his pair of wooden shoes. 

Petrasche understood, and nestled his nose in 
the lad’s hand, as though to pray him not to mind 
any woe or want of his. 

The winner of the drawing prize was to be 
proclaimed at noon, and to the public building where 
he had left his treasure ~Ne\\o made his way. On 


60 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


the steps, and in the hall, there was a crowd of 
youths, — some of his age, some older, all with 
parents or friends. His heart was sick with fear as 
he went amongst them, holding Petrasche close to 
him. The great bells of the city clashed out the 
hour of noon. The doors of the inner hall were 
opened; the eager throng rushed in. It was known 
that the selected picture would be raised above the 
rest upon a wooden dais. 

A mist obscured hello’s sight, his head swam, 
his limbs almost failed him. When his vision 
cleared he saw the drawing raised on high; it was 
not his own! A slow, loud voice was proclaiming 
aloud that victory had been adjudged to Stephen 
Kiesslinger, born in Antwerp. 

When Nello recovered his consciousness, he was 
lying on the stones without, and Petrasche was try- 
ing with every art he knew, to call him back to life. 
In the distance, a throng of the youths of Antwerp 
were shouting around their successful comrade, and 
escorting him to his home. 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


61 


The boy staggered to his feet and drew the 
dog to his embrace. " It is all over, dear Pet- 
rasche,” he said, w all over!” 

He rallied himself as best he could, for lie was 
weak from fasting, and retraced his steps to the 
village. Petrasche paced by his side with his head 
drooping and his old limbs feeble from hunger and 
sorrow. 

The snow was falling fast; a keen hurricane 
blew from the north; it was bitter as death on the 
plains. It took them long to walk the familiar path, 
and the bells were sounding four, as they came to 
the hamlet. Suddenly Petrasche paused, scratched, 
whined, and drew out with his white teeth a small 
case of brown leather. He held it up to Nello in 
the darkness. Where they were, there stood a little 
Cross, and a lamp burned dimly under the cross; 
the boy mechanically turned the case to the light. 
On it was the name of Master Cogez, and within it 
were notes for two thousand francs. 

The sight roused the lad a little from his 


62 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


stupor. He thrust it into his bosom, stroked Pet- 
rasche and drew him onward. The dog looked up 
into his face. 

Kello went straight to the mill-house, to the 
house-door, and struck on its panels. The miller’s 
wife opened it, weeping, with little Alice clinging 
close to her skirts. "Is it thee, thou poor lad?” 
she said kindly through her tears. "Get thee gone 
ere the Master see thee. We are in sore trouble to- 
night. He is out seeking for money that he has let fall 
riding homeward, and in this snow he never will 
find it. God knows it will go nigh to ruin us. It 
is Heaven’s own judgment for the things we have 
done to thee.” 

Kello put the note-case in her hand and called 
Petrasche within the house. " Petrasche found the 
money to-night,” he said quickly. " Tell Cogez so ; 
I think he will not deny the dog shelter and food in 
his old age. Keep him from following me, and I 
pray of you to be good to him.” 

Ere either woman or dog knew what he meant 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


63 


he had stooped and kissed Petrasche, closed the 
door hurriedly, and disappeared in the gloom of 
the fast falling night. 

The woman and the child stood speechless with 
joy and fear. Petrasche vainly spent his fury 
against the iron-bound oak of the barred house- 
door. They did not dare unbar the door and let 
him forth, but tried all they could to solace him. 
They brought him sweet cakes and juicy meats; 
they tempted him with the best they had; they tried 
to lure him to abide by the warmth of the hearth; 
but it was of no avail. Petrasche refused to be 
comforted or to stir from the barred portal. 

It was six o’clock when from an opposite 
entrance the miller at last came, jaded and broken, 
into his wife’s presence. "It is lost forever,” he 
said with an ashen cheek and a quiver in his stern 
voice. "We have looked with lanterns everywhere; 
it is gone, — the little maiden’s portion and all ! ” 

His wife put the money into his hand, and told 
him how it had come to her. The strong man sank 


64 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


trembling into a seat and covered his face, ashamed 
and almost afraid. " I have been cruel to the lad,” 
he muttered at length; "I deserved not to have 
good at his hands.” 

Little Alice, taking courage, crept close to her 
father and against him nestled her fair curly head. 
" Nello may come here again, father?” she whis- 
pered. " He may come to-morrow as he used to do? ” 

The miller pressed her in his arms; his hard, 
sun-burned face was very pale, and his mouth 
trembled. " Surely, surely,” he answered his child. 
" He shall bide here on Christmas Day, and any 
other day he will. God helping me, I will make 
amends to the boy, — I will make amends.” 

Little Alice kissed him in joy, then slid from 
his knees and ran to where the dog kept watch by 
the door. " And to-night I may feast Petrasche?” 
she cried in a child’s thoughtless glee. 

Her father bent his head gravely. "Ay, ay: 
let the dog have the best; ” for the stern old man 
was moved and shaken to his heart’s depths. 


A DOG OF FLANDEHS. 


65 


It was Christmas Eve, and the mill-house was 
filled with oak logs and squares of turf, with cream 
and honey, with meat and bread, and the rafters 
were hung with wreaths of evergreen, and the Cross 
and cuckoo clock looked out from a mass of holly. 
There were little paper lanterns too for Alice, and 
toys of various kinds, and sweetmeats in bright- 
pictured papers. There were light and warmth 
everywhere, and the child would have made the dog 
a guest honored and feasted. 

But Petrasche would neither lie in the warmth, 
nor share in the cheer. Famished he was, and very 
cold, but without Nello he would take neither com- 
fort nor food. Against all temptation he was proof, 
and close against the door he leaned always, watch- 
ing for a means of escape. 

" He wants the lad,” said Master Cogez. " Good 
dog! good dog! I will go over to the lad the first thing 
at day-dawn.” For no one but Petrasche knew that 
Nello had left the hut, and no one but Petrasche knew 
that Nello had gone to face starvation and misery alone. 


66 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


The mill-kitchen was very warm; great logs 
crackled and flamed on the hearth ; neighbors came 
in for a glass of wine and a slice of the fat goose 
baking for supper. Alice gleeful, and sure of her 
playmate back on the morrow, bounded and sang 
and tossed back her yellow hair. Cogez, in the ful- 
ness of his heart, smiled on her through moistened 
eyes, and spoke of the way in which he would 
befriend her favorite companion; the house-mother 
sat with calm, contented face at the spinning-wheel; 
the cuckoo in the clock chirped mirthful hours. 
Amidst it all Petrasche was bidden with a thousand 
words of welcome to tarry there. But neither peace 
nor plenty could keep him where Nello was not. 

When the supper smoked on the board, and the 
voices were loudest and gladdest, and the Christ- 
child brought choicest gifts to Alice, Petrasche, 
watching a chance, glided out when the door 
was unlatched by a careless new-comer, and as swift- 
ly as his weak and tired limbs would bear him sped 
over the snow in the bitter black night. He had 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


67 


only one thought, — to follow Nello. A human 
friend might have paused for the pleasant meal, the 
cheery warmth, the cosy slumber; but that was not 
the friendship of Petrasche. He remembered a by- 
gone time, when an old man and a little child had 
found him sick unto death in the wayside ditch. 

Snow had fallen freshly all the evening long; it 
was now nearly ten, and the trail of the boy’s foot- 
steps was almost hidden. It took Petrasche long to 
discover any scent. When at last he found it, it 
was lost, again quickly, and lost and found, and 
again lost, and again found a hundred times or more. 

The night was very wild. The lamps under 
the wayside crosses were blown out, the roads were 
sheets of ice, the darkness hid every house; there 
was no living thing abroad. All the cattle were 
housed, and in all the huts and homesteads men and 
women rejoiced and feasted. There was only Pet- 
rasche out in the cruel cold, — hungry and full of 
pain, but with the strength and the patience of a 
great love to help him in his search. 



CAT11EDKAL, ANTWERP 



A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


69 


The trail of Nello’s steps, faint as it was under 
the new snow, went straight into Antwerp. It was 
passed midnight when Petrasche traced it over the 
town and into the narrow, gloomy streets. It was 
all quite dark in the town, save where some light 
gleamed through the house-shutters, or some group 
went home with lanterns, singing drinking-songs. 
The streets were white with ice; the high walls and 
roofs loomed black against them. There was scarce 
a sound save the winds down the passages as they 
tossed the creaking signs, and shook the tall lamp- 
posts. 

So many passers-by had trodden through and 
through the snow, so many paths had crossed and 
recrossed each other, that the dog had a hard task 
to hold the track he followed. But he kept on his 
way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and 
the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his 
body gnawed like a rat’s teeth. He kept on his 
way, a poor, gaunt, shivering thing, and by long 
patience traced the steps he loved into the very 


70 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


heart of the city, and up to the steps of the great 
cathedral. 

"He is gone to the things that he loved,” 
thought Petrasche; but he was full of sorrow and of 
pity. 

The doors of the cathedral were unclosed after 
the midnight mass. Some heedlessness in the cus- 
todians, too eager to go home and feast,* and sleep, 
or too drowsy to know whether they turned the keys 
aright, had left one of the doors unlocked. By that 
accident, the feet Petrasche sought had passed 
through into the building, leaving the white marks 
of snow upon the dark stone floor. By that slender 
white thread, frozen as it fell, he was guided through 
the silence, guided straight to the gates of the 
chancel; and, stretched there upon the stones, he 
found Nello. He crept up and touched the face of 
the boy. " Didst thou dream that I should be faithless 
and forsake thee? I, — a dog?” said that mute caress. 

The lad raised himself with a low cry, and 
clasped him close. "Let us lie down and die 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


71 


together,” he murmured. ” Men have no need of 
us, and we are all alone.” 

In answer, Petrasehe crept closer yet, and laid 
his head upon the young boy’s breast. The great 
tears stood in his brown, sad eyes; not for himself, 
— for himself, he was happy. 

They lay close together in the piercing cold. 
The blasts that blew over the Flemish dikes from 
the northern seas were like waves of ice, which 
froze every living thing they touched. The great 
vault of stone in which they were was even more 
bitterly chill than the snow-covered plains without. 
Now and then a gleam of light came on the ranks of 
carven figures. Under the Rubens, they lay to- 
gether quite still, and soothed almost into a dream- 
ing slumber by the numbing of the cold. Together 
they dreamed of the old glad days when they had 
chased each other through the flowering -grasses of 
the summer meadows, or sat hidden in the tall bul- 
rushes by the water’s side, watching the boats go 
seaward in the sun. 


4 



ELEVATION OF T1IE CROSS. 


( Rubens .) 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


73 


Suddenly through the darkness a great white 
light streamed through the aisles; the moon, that 
was at her height, had broken through the clouds; 
the snow had ceased to fall; the light from the 
snow without was clear as the light of dawn. It 
fell from the arches full upon the two pictures 
above, from which the boy on his entrance had 
flung back the veil. The Elevation and the Descent 
from the Cross were for one instant visible. 

"Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to 
them; tears glistened on the paleness of his face. 
"I have seen them at last!” he cried aloud. "O 
God, it is enough ! ” 

His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon 
his knees, still gazing upward at the majesty that he 
adored. For a few brief moments, the light illumined 
the divine visions that had been denied to him so 
long, — light clear, and sweet, and strong, as though 
it streamed from the throne of Heaven. Then 
suddenly it passed away, and once more a great 
darkness covered the face of Christ. 



DESCENT FKOM THE CltOSS 


( Rubens .) 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


75 


The arms of the boy drew close again the body 
of the dog. "We shall see His face, — there” he 
murmured, " and He will not part us, I think.” 

On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, 
the people of Antwerp found them both. They 
were dead: the cold of the night had frozen into 
stillness the young life and the old. When the 
Christmas morning broke and the priests came to 
the temple, they saw them lying thus, on the stones. 
Above, the veils were drawn back from the great 
pictures of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise 
touched the thorn-crowned head of the Christ. 

As the day grew on there came an old, hard- 
featured man, who wept as women weep. "I was 
cruel to the lad,” he muttered, " and now I would 
have made amends, — yea, to the half of my sub- 
stance, — and he should have been to me as a son.” 

There came also, a painter who had fame in the 
world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. 
"I seek one who should have had the prize yester- 
day if worth won,” he said to the people; "a boy 


76 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on 
a fallen tree at eventide, — that was all his theme; 
but there was greatness for the future in it. I 
would fain find him, and take him with me and 
teach him Art.” 

And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing 
bitterly as she clung to her father’s arm, cried aloud, 
"O Kello, come! We have all ready for thee. 
The Christ-child’s hands are full of gifts, and the 
old piper will play for us; and the mother says thou 
shalt stay by the hearth and burn .nuts with us all 
the Christmas week long, — yes, even to the Feast of 
the Kings! And Petrasche will be so happy! O 
Nello, wake and come! ” 

But the young, dead, pale, face, turned upward 
to the light of the great Rubens with a smile upon 
its mouth, answered them all, w It is too late.” 

For the sweet bells went ringing through the 
frost, and the sunlight shone upon the plains of 
snow, and the people trooped gay and glad through 
the streets, but Kello and Petrasche no more asked 


A DOG OF FLANDERS. 


77 


charity at their hands. All they needed now, 
Antwerp gave unbidden. 

Death had been more pitiful to them than life 
would have been. It had taken the one in the 
loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence of 
faith. 

All their lives they had been together, and in 
their death they were not divided; for when they 
were found the arms of the boy were folded too 
closely around the dog to be severed without 
violence, and the people of their little village, sorry 
and ashamed, asked a special grace for them, and, 
making them one grave, laid them to rest there side 
by side, — forever! 





































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